The Great Circus Train Robbery (8 page)

Zoe saw the stranger in the top row stretch out a hand—then pull it back. Hackberry reached for his car but Orange Hoop was quicker and got away. Howling, Hackberry raced for the exit, the monkey scampering behind. Spence tried to push the clown back in, but Hackberry was stronger. “No!” he cried. “Leave me be!”

Spence pushed harder, Zoe could see the sweat on his brow. But Hackberry gave a giant push and knocked Spence down. He shoved past the waiting performers and out through the tent flap.  “Bring the  train,”  he hollered  at Spence,  who  was struggling to rise.  “Leave it in my bus.”  Sweet Gum jumped on the clown’s back, and they were off.

“How do I do that?” Spence whispered to Zoe. “I’m not supposed to go in the ring.”

“One of the crew will bring them in,” she said. There were steel poles in each of the two rings, with men controlling the ropes that hoisted and lowered the high-wire artists.

When she looked out again she saw that the mustached observer had left. Who was he? Someone Hackberry was afraid of? Did he want Hackberry’s rail cars? “Maybe he’s the one who took your baggage car,” she said.

“Who is? I can’t read your mind.”

“Mr. Mustache,” she said. “So you’d better go back and see how Hackberry is. No, wait. I’ll go with you. When Tulip comes back in.”

Out in the ring a short fat male clown was juggling four green apples. He dropped one, and then another, and the skin split and splattered.
Applesauce,
Zoe thought—so much for her gift to Tulip.

Tulip, Lulu, and the petite clown were struggling for possession of the red hoop. Tulip was bigger, Lulu was louder and yippier, but the petite clown was younger and stronger. She had her hoop around Tulip’s neck and was yanking her in circles. As the music wound down, Tulip gave one last shove, the petite clown fell on her backside and Tulip ended upright with the red and yellow hoops around her middle. She did a wiggle dance; the hoops spun about her robust figure. Then she flung her arms high, picked up her dog and sashayed back through the bead curtain. The safety pin gave way as she squeezed through; her costume split in the rear to reveal her pink brassiere and big cotton bloomers.

“Don’t worry,” Zoe said, “Mom will fix it.”

“Oh, you darling girl,” Tulip said, giving Zoe a bear hug— she was in a good mood since she’d won the hoop contest. “Was it a good show?”

“Oh yes, it was wonderful,” Zoe said, trying not to think about her gift of green apples. “Yeah, great,” Spence agreed, though he probably hadn’t watched Tulip at all, Zoe thought; he was too worried about Hackberry.

One of the crew brought back the basket of rail cars and Spence picked it up. He’d go over to Hackberry’s school bus right off, he said, since Zoe was still holding together Tulip’s costume.

“Be careful now,” she said.

“Careful of what?”

“Of anything that might happen,” she said, thinking of the mustached man and Hackberry racing off like he was escaping a man with a big stick.

“I can handle it,” Spence said, squaring his shoulders.

“Tell me again how I was. Did I do good?” Tulip asked after Spence left. And Zoe realized there was one more tricky aspect to her job: To stroke Tulip’s ego.

And trickiest of all: To ask her busy mom to sew up the ripped costume.

15

THINGS ARE BREAKING DOWN ALL OVER

Spence hurried back to Hackberry’s school bus and rapped on the door.   When there was no response he rapped again. “Hackberry? I’ve got your train. Hackberry?”

Still no reply, so he pushed open the door and went in. The place was even more of a mess than when they’d left: zigzagging rail cars, banana peels, socks and shirts in fallen heaps on the floor. Obviously the man lived alone, with no one, like Spence’s mom, to say, ‘Pick up your socks. Make your bed.’

Spence envied the clown. He hated having to make his bed and pick up his socks. Though he did like his music corner clean. The cello was his baby: if it got dusty, it didn’t play right. Spence liked a deep mellow sound, like the soundtrack in a movie he’d seen with dawn coming up, spreading honey over the world.

He heard a squealing sound behind the partition that separated living from sleeping space, and there was Sweet Gum, perched on the head piece of the antique single bed. At least it looked like an antique bed with its four bedposts. Underneath was an old wooden chest, or trunk; he started to open it, but then felt guilty. He wouldn’t want anyone opening the chest of drawers in
his
bedroom.

Should he go looking for Hackberry? Was that part of his job? He was just a volunteer, but he hadn’t been voted most conscientious in his class for nothing. And he worried that Hackberry seemed so scared of the world. A girl in his class took medication for her moods, and one time she’d gone off the stuff and tried to swallow a bottle of her mother’s aspirin. Uh oh. Would Hackberry do that? What had frightened him so much out there during the rehearsal when there were no spectators?

Except, of course, for the mustached man in the black tie who was probably the director. Spence thought of the substitute teacher who got so mad at one of the kids that he wrestled him to the floor and sat on him. Had Hackberry been sat on like that?

Spence had no answers. He just wanted to find Zoe and go home. But when he left the sleeping area, the monkey leapt on his back and clung. It felt like a bookbag, full of fat textbooks. On the way out, Sweet Gum leaned over to snatch a banana from a bowl and nearly bowled him over. But he got his balance back, and together they descended the steps.

The rehearsal was over, the outdoors flooded with performers, all laughing or juggling colored pins or throwing frisbees or sucking on bottles of soda pop—no tall man in black among them. He spotted Zoe walking behind Tulip, holding the back of her open costume. Then oops! A dwarf came running, rammed into the pair, and the costume billowed wide to reveal her underpants. Spence grinned. So did the dwarf, and ran off.

“Little beast!” Tulip hollered. Then she laughed, stepped out of the torn costume, waved it in the air like a flag, and trotted up the steps of her RV.

“Zoe!” Spence caught her just as she started up behind Tulip.

“What are you doing with that monkey?” she asked, and he spilled out the tale of Hackberry’s disappearance.  “I think he shut the monkey in the bus and then took off somewhere.  Or someone else brought it back.”

“Someone else? Who?”

“That’s what we have to find out.”

“That’s what
you
have to find out. Right now I’ve got my hands full. I’ve got to get Tulip’s costume fixed. Or make her a new one by Saturday. I have to go in and take her measurements.”

“Big,” he said, spreading his arms.

“Oh, great. I just tell mom ‘big,’ and she’ll make it the right size. Now go check the Portapotties, please. That’s probably where Hackberry is. Throwing up if he’s so scared of everything. Mom’s coming to pick up us at four-fifteen. And that’s”—she checked her watch—” in sixteen minutes. We’ll meet in the parking lot. See you there.” She leapt up the trailer steps in her sagging red shorts and white socks that had a hole in the center of each one.

“Your mom better get you some new shorts.”  He grinned. “Or a big safety pin.”

“And you better go brush your hair. It’s full of banana peel. Cute!” She laughed, like it was something hilarious.

Which it wasn’t. He combed out the peel with his fingers, then thrust the monkey back into Hackberry’s school bus. It howled when he shut the door on it. Now he’d have to come back and feed it if Hackberry didn’t show up. Or find someone to do it—but he couldn’t think that far ahead right now. He just wanted to find Hackberry.

He looked around for someone to ask.

“Hackberry?” said a woman holding up a pink parasol over her puffy orange hairdo, “he’s just paranoid. Don’t worry about him.”

“Hackberry?’ said a hairy man in a sleeveless black T-shirt. “Wife left him,  you know.  He’s probably gone off to cry somewhere.  He’ll turn up.   When he comes off, you gotta shove him back in.”

“I tried to shove him back and he shoved me and took off,” Spence explained.

“Then you better start lifting weights and try harder.”

“Where is his wife?” Spence asked. He hadn’t known about a wife. But if he could locate her...

“Up there on the hill.” The man waved an arm. “She used to be a clown. But she’s not clowning around with him anymore. They’re separated.” Guffawing, the man ran to catch up with the pink parasol.

Discouraged, Spence found Zoe’s mom in the parking lot—he was already five minutes late. She was holding up Tulip’s ripped costume, she wasn’t happy. “I know French School’s over,” she was telling Zoe, “but I have to read a new book for French 3. I have to plan assignments, I have to...”

“Mom, please. I’ll help. I’ll make dinner. If you can just pin a patch on the back, I’ll sew it up. We’ll do it together, Mom.”

“It’s too far gone for a patch,” Mrs. Elwood said. “I’ll have to buy some fabric on the way home and have Missy Barnes cut out a new one. But by tomorrow?”

“By Saturday, Mom.”

“Oh, goody. We’ll have a whole day to do it then.” She made a growling noise in her throat. But she turned on a smile when she saw Spence. “How’s the cello tuning up, Spence?”

“Not so well. It needs a new A string.”

“Oh dear. Must be a contagion in the air. Things are breaking down all over. I even saw that grumpy new neighbor of ours, driving out of the parking lot. His car sounded like the 1812 Overture, complete with firing cannon. He must have a shot muffler.”

“Mr. Boomer you mean?”

“Of course, Mr. Boomer. The rest of our neighbors are friendly.”

“Was he wearing a black hat and tie?” Zoe asked. “Did he have a mustache?”

“Not unless he grew it since yesterday. Anyway, everything looked dark through the misty windshield. It’s starting to rain, in case you hadn’t noticed. But no, I had the impression of something, um—yellow, I think. A yellow shirt, yes. I can’t imagine Mr. Boomer in a necktie. Now get in the car, please? If we’re going to stop at the fabric shop and still have a meal when your dad and Kelby get in from the trees, we’ll have to hustle.”

“It was Boomer, I bet,” Zoe whispered to Spence in the back seat (her parents’ rules).  “He could’ve worn a fake mustache. He could’ve made a quick change.”

“And kidnapped Hackberry,” Spence said. “Tied him up and locked him in the trunk of his car. Jeezum. Now what?”

“We get back into his house, that’s what,” Zoe said. “Soon as I can think up a way.”

16

AN ARGUMENT AND A SLAMMED DOOR

“Give me an hour and I’ll be ready for Boomer’s,” Zoe told Spence when he burst into the Elwood house after an early supper. Her mother had set up a sewing machine on the dining room table. “Oh no! No-oo!”

“No, is right,” said Spence, looking down on her. “It’s too risky to go there.”

“I wasn’t talking about that. I just sewed the sleeve to the bodice! Now I’ll have to pull out all these stitches.” Missy Barnes had cut out the costume after a call to Tulip for the correct dimensions, but that’s all she had time for. It was up to the Elwoods to sew it, Missy said. And now her mother, who rarely sewed, was telling Zoe it was up to
her.
“Sewing’s a useful skill to have,” her mother had said. “Sailors sew and engineers sew. Doctors and nurses sew people up. You never know when you’ll have to do it.”

“If girls should learn to sew, then boys should, too.” Zoe was feeling frustrated. She bared her teeth at Spence.

He glanced at her, surprised. “I don’t know why you said you’d do that, anyway. Tulip eats too much, that’s all. Did you see all that chocolate in her trailer?”

“Speak for yourself. I saw you load your pockets.”

“I don’t gain weight,” he said, looking smug.

It was true, he didn’t.  He was as skinny as a pencil. “Anyway,” she said, “just keep an eye out for Boomer leaving the house.  If he doesn’t, we’ll have to sneak in late tonight when he’s sleeping.”

“What? That’s crazy. He’ll call the cops, and they’ll throw us in jail. We’ll never find Hackberry and I’ll never get my baggage car back.  Which reminds me...”

“Ow-ww!” She’d almost sewed her finger to the fabric. She didn’t want to learn how to sew. There would always be safety pins. “Reminds you of what?”

“Hackberry’s trailer. There was an old chest under his bed. I didn’t look in it, though.”

“Of course not. Why would you?”

“It might give a clue to where he is. Maybe I should look. His  wife was  a clown,  too,  you know—or was.  They’re separated now.”

“You do feel responsible for him, don’t you. Well, he might be in Boomer’s house—but tied up and can’t communicate. Boomer might shoot Hackberry with one of his rifles and bury him in the cellar
with
your baggage car.”

“Sure. So what day is it?” he asked. “What month?”

“August, of course. Why are you asking that?

“You need a grip on reality. You’re living in a world of speculation.”

“Where’d you learn that word?”

“Just around.” Spence was looking smug again. He was standing with his back to the dining room door where she’d pinned up a Quirkus Circus poster. He was perfectly still, eyes shut, like he was asleep on his feet. She knew he wasn’t asleep though, he was considering her words. Her
speculation.
“Okay,” he said finally. “But you watch for Boomer leaving the house. I’m going to see Mrs. Hackberry.”

She swiveled about in her chair. “How’re you going to get there? It’s already seven-fifteen.”

“I can ride my bike. It’s only a couple miles. I have to feed the monkey—whatever monkeys eat. And if Hackberry’s with his wife, we won’t have to sneak into Boomer’s house again.”

“Oh no? You don’t want your red baggage car back? You want some innocent person buried in his cellar? You don’t care if I—” She stopped. She’d been about to say, “If I get promoted to lieutenant in the spy club. Spence didn’t care about the spy club; he was only some sort of dumb special agent.

“Well, do what you have to do. Go away.” She waved him off.  Her eyes were filling and she couldn’t see what she was sewing.  The costume didn’t look  right at all  and she’d promised Tulip.  Her mother   wasn’t fully cooperating. Everything was going wrong. Wrong!